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Build Your Own Programming Language

You're reading from   Build Your Own Programming Language A programmer's guide to designing compilers, interpreters, and DSLs for modern computing problems

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jan 2024
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781804618028
Length 556 pages
Edition 2nd Edition
Languages
Tools
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Author (1):
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Clinton  L. Jeffery Clinton L. Jeffery
Author Profile Icon Clinton L. Jeffery
Clinton L. Jeffery
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Table of Contents (27) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section I: Programming Language Frontends
2. Why Build Another Programming Language? FREE CHAPTER 3. Programming Language Design 4. Scanning Source Code 5. Parsing 6. Syntax Trees 7. Section II: Syntax Tree Traversals
8. Symbol Tables 9. Checking Base Types 10. Checking Types on Arrays, Method Calls, and Structure Accesses 11. Intermediate Code Generation 12. Syntax Coloring in an IDE 13. Section III: Code Generation and Runtime Systems
14. Preprocessors and Transpilers 15. Bytecode Interpreters 16. Generating Bytecode 17. Native Code Generation 18. Implementing Operators and Built-In Functions 19. Domain Control Structures 20. Garbage Collection 21. Final Thoughts 22. Section IV: Appendix
23. Answers
24. Other Books You May Enjoy
25. Index
Appendix: Unicon Essentials

Overall program structure

When looking at the overall program structure, we need to look at how entire programs are organized and put together, as well as the lightning rod question of how much nesting is in your language. It almost seems like an afterthought, but how and where will the source code in programs begin executing? In languages based on C, execution starts from a main() function, while in scripting languages, the source code is executed as it is read in, so there is no need for a main() function to start the ball rolling.Program structure also raises the basic question of whether a whole program must be translated and run together, or if different packages, classes, or functions can be separately compiled and then linked and/or loaded together for a program to run. A language inventor can dodge a lot of implementation complexity by either building things into the language (if it is built-in, there is no need to figure out linking), requiring the whole program's source...

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